There were some people (I was one of them) who were wondering if Collaborate would be the successor to the Hyperion Solutions conference just with a lot of other Oracle products thrown in. The Hyperion attendance fell from 2008 to 2009, so it wasn't surprising when the Collaborate organizers decided to cut the Hyperion/EPM presentations at Collaborate 2010.

While IOUG historically has some Essbase and OBIEE presentations (and in 2009, Quest had a couple of general EPM sessions), the main Oracle EPM/Hyperion/Essbase group at Collaborate is OAUG since they inherited the mantle of the old HUGs (Hyperion User Groups). Everyone was curious as to how many presentations OAUG would allot to Hyperion in 2010.

Looks Like About 35 Sessions from OAUG

Not including the ones from IOUG and Quest (because it's way too hard to figure out from their sites which ones are Oracle EPM specific), OAUG has approximately 35 sessions devoted to Oracle EPM (Hyperion and Essbase). I got this number by going to the OAUG Presentation Search and selecting "Hyperion EPM" (which doesn't make a lot of sense product naming wise, but whatever). It gave me the following list:

Now the reason I'm saying that there are "about 35 sessions" is that some of the ones listed don't really seem like EPM presentations (like #2, #25, and #35 above). Keep checking http://oaug.collaborate10.com/agenda/search because I'm sure they'll reclass everything correctly at some point.

There is a major scarcity of Essbase presentations. There are two that mention Essbase in the title and judging by the abstract, #6 is also an Essbase presentation. That means OAUG will have just 3 Essbase presentations. Of course, you can't really expect all the products to be covered well with only 35 presentation slots.

I also find it really interesting that Oracle was only given 3 presentations and that's 3 if you include #25 above which really isn't related to EPM. That puts interRel in the peculiar spot of having more Oracle EPM presentations than Oracle does. If anyone from Oracle would like to co-present one of the interRel ones with us, send me an e-mail and I'll be happy to split the presenting workload with you.

Should I Bother Going?

It's quite clear that Collaborate is no longer trying to be a national conference for Hyperion. Even once you add in the content from IOUG and Quest, it's clear that Collaborate seems to be aiming to provide just enough Hyperion content so that people going to Collaborate for other products can feel happy if they also own Hyperion. If you are primarily interested in learning about Hyperion, skip Collaborate in 2010 and go to either one of the regional OAUG EPM Connection conferences or the national ODTUG Kaleidoscope conference. It's not worth it to spend between $1,385 and $2,125 on Collaborate for this little content.

Is there any reason to go to Collaborate 2010 if you only care about Hyperion and Oracle EPM? Well, it is in Vegas, and for some of us, that's the only reason we need.

A Word to Hyperion Vendors

And some free advice to Hyperion-centric consulting firms: if your company primarily does Oracle EPM, I'd save the money you were going to spend on a Collaborate booth and exhibit at Kaleidoscope and EPM Connection. There just won't be enough Hyperion attendees to make the ROI worth it to have a major presence at Collaborate. Ignore this advice if you want, but don't complain when the majority of the Hyperion attendees at Collaborate are other Hyperion partners who made the same mistake.